I’ve been perfectly happy with Amazon not having presence here. I can wait (for the deliv ery) and haven’t had to wait long. If the local businesses sold at a discount, I’d buy from them, but I’ve been buying my photo and hifi equipment for decades from places like New York City, presumably high rent districts (42st Street Photo, for example), while the local dealers justified their high prices by their supposedly high rents, a least until the Hindu owned discounters opened up stores here. Remember Crown Books when it beat the book dealers to the bunch with discounts? Remember the used record stores that provoked the one and only (has-been) Garth Brooks to refuse to distribute to them?
Yup,over the last couple of years I've done exactly that...about $8K worth of various electronic items from NYC (B&H,J&R,etc) which doesn't collect taxes on out of state shipments.But as I said,I report all such purchases on my state tax return,as required by state law,because I'm a *good* boy! ;-)
Well, good luck. I love Amazon and will continue to buy from them. I unfortunately live in IL which is also going after Amazon to collect sales tax and at some point they may be forced into it by our State pols. So far, they have held off, but many states are after Amazon because it is a big money pot of revenue collection, and the lib states are all broke.
The states claim it is unfair competition with local businesses as an excuses, but local businesses don’t have to charge shipping like on-line and catalog businesses do, a giant point the pols fail to acknowledge. They just want the money, regardless of what it does to an on-line or catalog’s business bottom line. Less people shopping a website, like you because you are taking it out on the wrong entity, Amazon in this particular case, will eventually affect sales, and less business start-ups on the web, and thus less jobs for potential employees. A lose, lose situation.
You can leave Amazon, but soon the states will be forcing all on-line website businesses and catalog houses to collect sales taxes and there will be nowhere for you to go. People need to go after the Pols that are supporting such legislation, not the victim businesses that end up having to bend to their political will.